Gearing up for summer :)

Hi All,

Long time since I blogged and I cant believe that we are already getting ready
to welcome Summer.

I would like to start out with this weekend of singing.

This weekend was fun, I got back to Karaoke after a long time. We visited Orchid Music Studio in KTOWN. It was a fun night and we had a bunch of great performances.

Rahul was in his usual singing mode. We had the Music Divas singing melodiously in Kate,Ara and Garima. Hayk,Harshal and Anubhav were the three music musketeers. Simon and Roselyn were great together.

Of course I performed like a Rock Star :). Fun night and I think I should go to Karaoke more often :).

Things I am looking forward to this summer not necessarily in the following order.

1) Lakers BasketBall (We Started well in the playoffs 3-0, its time to take this all the way ). The team looks good and I believe we made the best trade in the league by picking up Gasol.

2) Working on Nurall, I am super excited to be working on Nurall, We have a bunch of exciting features coming up.I like the fact that we are moving ahead and with each small step we are moving towards our goal. Also as we interact with Inventors and
figure out how we might help them it makes me feel good about our venture.

3) Building an AdEngine I do this at work in Citysearch. I want to get this out and see
how we monetize it , this is a nice learning experience and a real world test
for what we are building.

4) Surfing Its time to Surf Up in the West Coast. I want to learn how to surf.

There are tons of other things (Work,Girls, Fun,Partying,Events etc ) that I am looking forward to and I will blog as significant things happen.

I have always been an optimist , Signing off with a Jimmy Dean Quote

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination"

Wishing you the best

Have Fun
Ravi

Red Rock : This place rocks

Its been a long time since my last post and today slightly inebriated from partying in red rock I have decided to post about this place. Red Rock is awesome , right across the building that I work.

The last few months have been fun , working for www.citysearch.com, traveling around the country seattle,san francisco,redmond,new jersey and chicago and of course our regular hang outs at red rock.

For the uninitiated
Red Rock
is the bar right across my work place on Sunset Blvd, it is a weekly hangout on Thursday night to watch football,catch up with friends and relax after a long day at work.

Also having been to so many different places I think LA still rocks, Of course I am being slightly biased as I like L.A. However the weather is perfect it is underrated, believe me after traveling to Chicago in December I think I have seen enough snow for a year,maybe we are slightly spoiled :) by the SoCal Weather.

Also it is great to watch USC win the Rose Bowl yet again and I believe college football needs a playoff system,Is it ever going to happen ?

Today was a nice day hanging out with colleagues John,Gabe,Kate,Ara,Simon from Work
and getting back home and to the city for 2008. Wishing you the best for 2008.

Signing Off
Ravi

Ron Paul : Got me thinking

Here is my story. As an active young blogger I follow politics but recently
few events hapened that got me really interested about the Presidential Race.
One of my good friends recently quit is Job and traveled cross country from
Los Angeles to New Hampshire to Support and participate in the Ron Paul campaign.
Crazy and foolish act I thought.

I later talked to my friend and he provided his reasoning.I was more surprised
that he was not alone and more of his friends had joined him in the campaign.

This got me thinking.Who is Ron Paul? and what is this all about.
So as usual I followed main stream media like CNN,FOX,MSNBC etc and it looks like this guy does not have a chance. But Wait lets check out the internet and see if this
story has a buzz and here you some of the numbers from different sites.

You Tube (Around 41,500 results)
Digg ( Has more than 10,000 diggs for some posts)
Technorati Ron Paul is one of the most searched for items

Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends?q=ron+paul

Notice I am not comparing Ron Paul to other candidates. That is not the point
I am making. The point is that there seems to be more buzz,interest about him
on the internet than on traditional media.

I discussed this with my friends and there were different reasonings provided.

Some of the common one's

A media conspiracy.
A political conspiracy.
He has a bunch of bloggers working for him.
Young people like him.
People Hate Him.

As a practical personal I debated about this. One thing that occurred through this
process is that it got me more interested in the presidential race.

It also got me thinking more about traditional media versus the internet.
People kept mentioning that it is easier to game the system on the internet
than on traditional media channels.

I cannot concur to this idea simply based on the fact that the internet is all about
me and you. The people. How can we say that few people know better than the masses
on the internet. The internet also lends itself to self regulation.

Still unanswered questions. Do comment on this topic.
I would love to hear your reactions and wouldn't mind if you hate this piece

I have always received passionate responses on this topic.

Signing Off
Ravi

Pausing Google Web History

One of the things that I noticed is that when I am signed onto one of Google's services like gmail,orkut,blogger,etc and perform web searches on Google. Google collects my web history, the web history is the record of searches that you performed on Google.

My friend Rahul was freaking out that Google was collecting all this information and
he didnot want them too. Google does have a simple way to pause it from collecting
your web history, when this feature is enabled I believe all your searches are not
recorded.

Here are the instructions on how to pause your web history on google

1) Log On to Google Web History by clicking on the option Google Web History

2) You can delete all items from your webhistory using the clear webhistory button.

3) When this is done it will also pause your webhistory. Alternatively you can click
on the pause button to prevent your searches from being recorded.

4) Help section for the google web history feature


Help for Google Web History


It is nice to know that the Opt Out feature from Google is Simple.
As always there is debate on whether people should Opt In to such features or
Opt Out as shown above.

So If you want to pause your web history on Google, Go Ahead.

Am I paranoid or is this is something that people want :)

Ravi

Yahoo Pipes:Having Fun

I started playing around with Yahoo Pipes.
For information about Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo Pipes


Yahoo Pipes is a powerful framework for mashups, working with RSS,Feeds
and also data integration.

Some of the pipes that I Created.


Search for apartments on craigslist.



Flickr+Delicious.


I can see this as a useful tool and it is hosted by Yahoo.

Got to Go, Have Fun

Social Networking: Better Late then Never ?

For a long time I have been too lazy on social networks.
I decided to come out of hibernation and become active on orkut and facebook.

My Friends if you read the blog find me on orkut,facebook.

I get why people get hooked on to these sites.
It s kind of fun actually to track your friends find out what they are upto
and discover new friends.

I am looking forward to the SC game tonight.
Waiting to see our Q.B Booty has improved from last year.

In the season I am looking forward to SC vs Cal and SC vs Oregon.
I believe these are going to be make or break games for us.

Signing Off, Fight On !

Ravi

Social Networking and Monetizing them

Social Networks have always intrigued me.
They are great now I can keep in touch with friends,family,coworkers,discover ppl etc

Facebook,MySpace,LinkedIn,Orkut etc are great and useful sites.
Also Ning now allows anyone to create their own social network.

One thing about social networks that intrigues me is revenue generation.

The CPC,CPA etc methods work fine with click based systems.

Having worked with SEM Systems and also Local Search Engines I think we need
to have better systems for monetizing social networks.

Pretty soon I believe we will see behaviour targeting on social networks.
They will not just look for keywords but also look at our friends,interests,actions to determine which Ads to serve.

Maybe we will see different types of ads, widgets may serve the function of dynamic ads.

An Interesting article about this topic.

Fox Interactive Media NYTimes Article

One thing of note is that there are going to be privacy concerns especially with the way we can target users on social networks.

A personalization dream a privacy nightmare?

I believe we can still reap the benefits of personalization and protect our privacy.

Remains to be seen who is going to be the first one to one to come with something similar to
Google AdSense for Social Networks.

Let me know if you see interesting things in this space.

Late Night Blogging, Time to Sleep

Ravi